


the best day

by huphilpuffs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, Injury, M/M, Parent Phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10521393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Most days, it was good. Even on the worst days, it was good.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Harley prompted it and this happened. Oops.  
> Trigger warnings: brief mentions of food.

Most days, it was good.

They were usually the simple days, when Dan left his hair curly atop his head and Phil wore his glasses instead of his contacts and their little girl stayed in her pajamas until mid-afternoon and nobody cared. 

Phil started such days with a breakfast of pancakes that drew his night owls from their bedrooms with groggy eyes and frowns drawing at the corners of their mouths. Dan swept his fingers through his hair and mumble about how it was  _ early  _ even though the sun rose and painted light across their living room hours ago. Sklyar drew her Winnie the Pooh themed baby blanket behind her, muffling a yawn behind her palm.

But two sets of brown eyes lit up at him when he set pancakes meant to be shaped like Mickey Mouse on their plates, and he’d feel the smile stretching across his face at the sight.

Skylar’s favorite thing was to watch cartoons in the morning when her breakfast was done and neither he nor Dan would have any complaints. Not when it allowed them to cuddle up on the couch with their little girl, her head resting on Dan’s thigh and toes stuck under Phil’s with a small smile on her face.

It was moments like those that made Phil’s heart beat easier, made him look over at his family with eyes surely gleaming with love and gratitude for all that had brought them there budding in his chest. 

But, like all children, Skylar would grow bored sitting on the couch with images flashing across the screen to entertain her. She’d lift her head from Dan’s leg, blanket clutched to her chest and a smile on her face that made a dimple pop in her cheek.

If he hadn’t been there when they’d handed her to Dan for the first time, hadn’t watched tears spill from his husband’s eyes as he cradled a bundle of pink with tufts of blonde hair and fluttering eyelids, Phil would have been certain she had Dan’s DNA as much as his love..

And he loved it, seeing the similarities between them. Seeing his two favorite people who had eyes like chocolate and cinnamon and dimples that made him want to pepper kisses to their cheeks and shower them in his love. 

“Daddy?” Skylar asked. “What we doing today?”

Dan would smile down at her, eyes soft and an offer falling from his lips that would make Skylar jump from the couch with excited glee bursting from her mouth. “We could go to the park?”

The best part of the good days came next. Skylar would get Dan’s help to choose an outfit and he’d dress her in a combination of something black and something pastel that would make her smile and twirl. And Phil would pull on his skinny jeans and a t-shirt as he watched Dan choose his own outfit.

It was stupid how it made him smile, giddy adoration flooding his chest, when he saw Dan try to match their daughter. It was gross and adorable at once, the kind of stuff that Phil would fake gag at on Twitter but smile fondly at when he saw Dan rolling his eyes at himself with the most beautiful smile on his face.

Skylar loved it, too, would bounce on her toes and point out that they matched until Dan was laughing and agreeing her and sweeping her into his arms with promises to do her hair.

_ That  _ was the best part.

From the moment’s Skylar’s hair was long enough to do, Dan had taken it upon himself to style it for her. He’d learned to do pigtails first, smiling wide and proud the first time it worked out and Skylar was toddling around their house with the most precious hairstyle Phil had ever seen.

As she grew older, and her hair grew longer, her favorite became braids. And Dan loved doing them for her.

Phil leaned against the bathroom door, watching his husband’s brows furrow in concentration as though his fingers hadn’t long since learned the motions of braiding as automatically as they knew the placement of every key on a keyboard. Watching his daughter bounce on her toes, trying to see herself in the mirror though she was still too short.

Dan would lift her up when it was done, let her sit on the vanity because they both knew what came next.

“Can I braid your hair too, Daddy?”

He’d let her, and Phil would muffle a laugh behind his palm, though his heart was racing and his chest was warm with love, with gratitude. 

It was still a crazy thought, one that struck him in the simplest of moments, on good days like that one, to think that meeting Dan on Twitter could lead to something so amazing. That he would find his best friend, his husband, the father of their daughter.

Skylar’s happy clapping interrupted his thoughts, drawing his attention to Dan admiring his not-quite-braid in the mirror and promising her it looked  _ great _ .

It didn’t. It was more a knot of hair than anything else. But Phil knew Dan liked to see light shimmering in their daughter’s eyes just as much as he did.

She’d turn to him for a moment, offer him the proudest of smiles rather than a braid in his hair and Phil loved it, loved knowing it was Dan’s special thing like matching their outfits and painting her nails. And knowing that he had his own moments, like when she lept from the vanity and ran to him with arms outstretched so he could sweep her into his embrace.

“Can we go to the park now, Papa?” she asked.

He smiled, pressed a kiss to a dimpled cheek as he promised they would leave soon. Dan would be smiling at him over their daughter’s shoulder.

Days like those were good.

\---

Some days, it was bad.

Those were the days when nights lingered too long and sleep was rare and even Phil couldn’t drag himself out of bed in the morning to smile his way through breakfast. Instead, he’d stay curled up under his covers until Skylar came to get him, blanket in toe and a voice so high with uncertainty that it would make his heart ache.

Such days usually started with Dan.

Not because there was anything wrong with Dan, not because he did anything wrong. But Dan’s brain was still wired to get lost in endless spirals of thought that Phil’s never did. The kind that Phil could watch drain the joy, the energy from his husband with every passing second of words falling from his lips and brows furrowed in thought.

They’d become less frequent, but they still came.

That night, it’d started with Dan checking in on Skylar after she’d fallen asleep. The simplest of things, an everyday affair that had his knuckles tightening around the door frame until they blanched and had Phil asking if he was okay. 

He wasn’t. 

Phil figured it was something about staring at such a small human being tangled in a sea of blankets, combined with the window open over her bed showing a small slice of the universe beyond. It was that kind of thing that had Dan sinking against Phil’s side, head resting on his shoulder as a broken question fall from her lips.

“Do you think she’ll know how important her life is?”

It was one question. It was the beginning of a spiral that Phil knew kept Dan up long after he, himself, had succumbed to sleep. That began a thought process Phil had heard many times before, full of questions like  _ what’s the point  _ and  _ why am I  here  _ and, since Skylar had come into their lives,  _ will she ever feel this way? _

He knew it was hard on Dan, could make his heart break under the pressure of the enormity of this world and his tiny part within it, the weight of worry that he’d teach Skylar such a painful form of self doubt. 

But it was hard on him, too, to stay up as late as he could to try to help his husband and wake up as early as necessary to start their daughter’s day with a smile. 

When responsibilities still followed him and Skylar got bored and Dan crawled out of bed to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie and glanced into the playroom. His eyes were drooping with fatigue and his hair a mess and Skylar was too young to know what was coming but Phil saw it in the frown etched across Dan’s face.

“Can you do my hair now, Daddy?” asked their daughter, because she’d pulled on her jeans and a t-shirt bright enough to match Phil’s, but golden strands were still knotted atop of her hair and falling in tangled waves over her shoulders.

Dan stared at her for a moment, sadness washing across his features before he answered. “Daddy has to go for a while, Sky,” he said. “Maybe later.”

And he turned away with a half hearted smile and a wave.

Skylar stared at the spot he vacated for a moment, Phil watching her every move, fingers frozen in their splay over his laptop’s keyboard.

Then she turned to him, smile small and eyes confused and question holding an answer before she’d even spoken it.

“Can you do my hair, Papa?”

He couldn’t. Phil didn’t know how to loop strands into braids, especially not the way Dan did. But the front door slammed in the distance and Skylar’s smile shook and he was trying to fix it by forcing his widest grin across his own face.

“Okay,” he answered, because even his and Dan’s bad days should be good for Skylar.

\---

That time, the bad day got worse.

It started with a phone call. 

He thought, at first, that it was Dan, probably with mumbled apologies and explanations and a soft voice asking him to tell Skylar he’d be home soon and he’d fix whatever mess Phil had made of her hair. But the phone had lit up with an unfamiliar number that had him considering ignoring it because he had a daughter with a dim smile that needed brightening.

But he’d answered.

And his heart had plummeted, motions stilled, breath escaped him on a stutter as the man on the other end of the call spoke.

“Is this Phil Lester, husband of Dan Lester?” he’d asked, and continued upon Phil’s quiet affirmation. “I’m nurse Draper, and I’m calling to inform you there’s been an accident.”

Phil didn’t wait to get all the details, silencing the nurse mid-sentence with a  _ I’ll be right there  _ and a termination of the call. Skylar was staring at him with wide eyes and he didn’t try to assuage her worries, opting instead to lift her into his arms and hold her tight and tell her they had to go find her Daddy with hopes that it wouldn’t scare her too much.

They took a cab. He didn’t trust himself to drive, not with his mind a constant cycle of questions and heart racing with worry in his chest. Skylar sat in the middle seat, nestled against his side with questions he couldn’t answer and cinnamon eyes that looked too much like Dan’s.

He’d called Louise, given her all the information he’d known, and she was already there when they’d arrived at the hospital, waiting at the entrance with worried eyes and arms open to Skylar.

There was a split second when he thought he could use a hug, too, but then she was looking at him. “All they would tell me is that he’s doing okay,” she offered. “Go find him, Phil.”

So he left Skylar with Louise and rushed to the information desk, heart heavy and breaking as he managed to ask about Dan. 

As it turns out, it wasn’t quite as serious as Phil’s mind had managed to convince him it was. There was no car crash or brain injury or possibility of death. Just an inattentive Dan and a bicycle and a broken foot.

Still, his steps were rushed as he made his way to Dan’s room, breathing still until his hand landed on the knob and he opened the door to Dan’s room.

There was his husband, his  _ Dan _ , staring at him with a giddy smile on his face that was certainly caused by the pain meds. 

“You look terrible,” said Dan, laughing too loudly but it was  _ beautiful.  _

He was beautiful. Even though he still looked like he’d barely slept and his hair was a mess, a cast was on his foot and the hospital gown they’d dressed him in looked no better than the sweats he’d thrown on earlier.

But he was alive.

“You look beautiful,” Phil responded.

\---

Even on the worst days, it was good.

And that good was usually Skylar.

Phil had gone to get her the moment he was sure Dan was okay and conscious and lucid enough to see their little girl. He’d lifted her into his arms, holding her tightly to his chest as she babbled like the child she was, an endless cycle of questions about her daddy and if he was okay and if the doctors were making him better that had Phil mumbling his answers against the crown of her head.

Dan was okay. He was okay. He had a broken foot but he was  _ okay. _

He swiped his thumbs across Skylar’s tear-stained cheeks when he reached the door to Dan’s rooms, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.

“You ready to see your Daddy?”

She nodded, smiling up at him in that shaky way he recognized from nights when she was woken with nightmares or when too little sleep had the whole world frustrating her. 

He pushed the door open. She turned with him to see Dan sitting on his bed, bright blue cast poking out from under his blanket and happiness lighting the chocolate shades of his eyes. Skylar squealed, a little too loudly for a hospital but he couldn’t bring herself to shush her when she rushing to Dan’s bedside, smiling as wider than she had since she first woke up that morning.

“You okay?” she asked, over and over again. “You okay, Daddy?”

Dan smiled down at her, dimple popping and eyes bright in that only Skylar could make them. “I’m okay, Sky,” he said. “My foot got a little booboo but the doctors are making it all better.”

Skylar looked down at his cast, eyed it for a moment before looking back at her dad. “Your foot?”

He nodded. “Just my foot.”

“Your hands okay?” said Skylar. Dan nodded at that, pulled them out from under the blanket, offering a messy explanation for the IV on one before wiggling his fingers to make sure she knew he was fine. “Can you do my hair?”

Dan barked out a laugh, and Phil felt amusement bubbling in his own chest part an explanation that maybe they should let Dan rest. But his husband caught his gaze, offered a quirk of his lip and a shake of his head.

This is what he needed. It was silent but it was certain and Phil stayed silent, drifting to the chair by Dan’s bedside to watch.

“Your Papa did mess it up, didn’t he?” he asked Skylar, and she nodded. “Well, how about you crawl up here and I can fix that for you?”

She did. Phil leaned against his seat and watched as Dan tangled his fingers in Skylar’s hair and tugged away the knots he’d accidentally left there earlier. And though his fingers were clumsy from pain meds and restrained by the IV, he still managed to give her braids more beautiful than anything Phil could muster.

His smile was wide. Even though his night was restless and his husband was in the hospital and Skylar’s cheeks were still stained from her earlier tears.

This was what the good days—the  _ best  _ days—were made of.

Dan seemed to think so, too, because when her hair was done, he let Skylar nestle herself against his side, held her close as she babbled about the day they had, asked Dan about his.

And when there was a lull in their conversation, Dan looked over Skylar’s head to stare at him instead, his smile soft and eyes bright like they usually were. Like they were on the good days.

“This is the point,” he said. “The good days, they’re the point.”

Phil was sure his smile was agreement enough. 


End file.
